One of the things I have done since I joined Brits Abroad is to get involved in organising their walks. These take place once a month and are led by someone who has researched either a completely new walk or updated an old one. As so much is changing, and so quickly, here in Shanghai the latter is more necessary than you might think. Within two years the whole landscape can change completely; buildings are knocked down and replaced more often than not with tower blocks, whole areas are being developed at a rapid place and restaurants, shops and landmarks come and go with surprising speed. Working with at least another walk team member we meet those who have signed up for that month’s walk at a suitable café, and when everyone has gathered – but at the very latest by 10am the leader sets off. Each member of the party is given a set of notes with interesting facts about the places that we visit, some of which may be read out if there is time. It is an opportunity to see parts of the town which members may not have visited, to learn a bit about the city’s history, to get some exercise and some fresh air if we are lucky. For many it is the very sociable nature of the walks that are most important – everyone is very friendly and there is much chitchat. Whilst welcome, this can be quite a headache for the organisers trying to keep everyone moving to get to the end of the walk by the allotted time and if there are only two of us from the team present it can get rather difficult to keep 25 or so gossiping women focused on the task on hand (at least in our heads). It’s a bit like herding cats really.
And it was like that when I led my first walk in December when we walked from the East side of the Nangpu River in Pudong. The idea of this walk, in the first week of December is to walk through the major international hotels and see the Christmas Decorations that they have put up. I understand that this is a fairly recent phenomenon, but the “tradition” has caught on fast and more and more places are putting up decorations. It upsets Richard somewhat, as it has no connections to the birth of Christ, but I come at it from an understanding that greenery was first put into houses in pagan times in Britain, and 
elsewhere in Europe, around the Winter Solstice as part of the mid-winter festival and the early Christians took over the festivities, named it as Christ’s Birthday, and took the festival for themselves.
Anyway it makes for a good walk and some of the hotels have some fantastic decorations in place this year. For several weeks beforehand I made a number of reccies finding a new café as the starting point, finding out whether there would actually be any decorations in place by the time we walked and making sure that the directions and information on the walk-sheet were correct so that they could be used at a later date from any member of Brits 
Abroad who wanted to do the walk themselves. It was a bit disconcerting doing this with very little of the glitzy bits up, but it all came good in the end. On the penultimate time I did the practice run I hit the jackpot as far as Brides and their Husbands/Fiancés having their wedding photos taken on The Bund. There were, I think, five brides in all, with red the most popular dress colour. Red is the luckiest colour in China and was the traditional colour of bridal wear in China before the white of the west made its way into their consciousness. A lovely colour for a Christmas Wedding, and the weather was still warm enough for none of these brides to be shivering.
I also had a chance to go into the small museum at the Swatch-Peninsula Hotel somewhere that I could only talk about with the group, as there were just too many of us to go up to the first floor room.
The Lady Walkers at Lujiazui
We started the walk in the glitzy upmarket ifc Mall in Pudong, which we quickly left and climbed to the Lujiazui pedestrian roundabout over the top of the vehicle roundabout by the Oriental Pearl Tower where we took a group photo. From there we walked around the roundabout to the other side of the road and on into the Pudong Shangri-La Hotel which not only had two spectacularly tall Christmas Trees but a ginger bread house that appeared to have been made from a garden shed, complete with gingerbread and stollen for sale inside.
The Shangri-La Pudong Hotel Christmas Tree
The Gingerbread House at the Shangri-la Hotel
From here we walked south, past the Aurora Museum and onto the ferry to cross the Huangpu River. Once on the Puxi side we then went into the Waldorf -Astoria, which had even decorated its front entrance exceedingly well.
The Font Porch Waldorf-Astoria on The Bund
The Handrails of the Staircase Waldorf-Astoria
No Less Than 8 Christmas Trees in the Front Lobby
The Waldorf-Astoria Gingerbread Tree
Entrance on the Bund
By the time that we did the walk, other buildings on The Bund had got into the Spirit of Things and decorated the fronts of their buildings too.
Next we moved onto the Art Deco Fairmont Peace Hotel which had gingerbread houses all the way around the base of their tree, which stood in their spectacular glass-domed atrium
The Atrium of the Fairmont Peace Hotel
Onto the House of Roosevelt, followed finally by the modern Peninsula Hotel, which for some reason likes to have a vintage car on display in its basement……
House of Roosevelt Restaurant
The Lobby at the Peninsula
The Reception Area The Peninsula
The Staircase At The Peninsula
Classic Car in the Basement
Lunch Menu
At the end of the walk I served everyone with a small taste of mulled wine that I had been carrying in a bag all the way along with me. The gesture seems to have been very much appreciated. We drank it whilst listening to a pianist playing on a grand piano at the most westerly entrance to the Peninsular Hotel, which all seemed very fitting and then those that wanted to went for a french bistro lunch at the Paris Bistro on Yuanmingyuan Road at the back of the Bund. Here we had the set lunch from the set menu and I had pumpkin soup and traditional “Rosbeef”, which just rounded off everything nicely.
Pumpkin Soup
Le “Rosbeef”
Pearls From The Orient 
